We want the left-wing party Syriza to win the Greek elections on 25 January. What else should socialists say?
The following resolution on Greece was written and passed at the Workers' Liberty national committee on 17 January. (See the resolution we published in January 2013, when the period of intense, even pre-revolutionary, struggles in Greece had not yet clearly come to an end.)
1. A Syriza victory on 25 January is most likely to be followed by a "honeymoon period" (how long, we can't say) in which all sections of Greek society wait to see what it does.
2. Greece's state machine is riddled by corruption; the rich are already siphoning their euros outside the country, and will do more of that; Golden Dawn still has wide support, despite having most of its leadership in jail. However, the most immediate threat to a Syriza government is the probability that it will be converted into a "government of national salvation" (a coalition including forces from the centre or even the right) and the weakness of the politics of the Syriza leaders.
3. The Greek debt crisis blew in early 2010. The period of frequent general strikes, a number of large sectoral strikes, and great activity on the streets, was 2010 to early 2012.
4. Since early 2012, there have been a number of struggles. But the September 2013 teachers' dispute, which might have unleashed a large revival of direct action, fizzled out quickly. There has been a substantial redirection of expectations towards political change, and with some good reason.
5. Syriza has gained strength electorally, but its activist organisation remains relatively weak. Syriza's talk in 2012 of building a mass party has come to little. The Syriza leadership has moved to the right. But, as a Syriza leftist tells us, still "everything is in flux" within the Syriza membership. The left in Syriza is still substantial. On important issues the rank and file of the majority, as well as the minority, dislikes the majority's orientation.
6. There are contradictory signals as regards the EU's and the IMF's willingness to cut Greece some slack. On the one hand, the EU leaders know that their current policies are not working, and are talking about some shifts, such as Quantitative Easing. On the other, EU leaders say that the eurozone can absorb a Greek exit now, more easily than it could in 2012. And the structure of the EU means that all concessions to Greece have to gain agreement from a wide range of people.
7. The policy of the Syriza leadership has now been reduced to negotiating a better deal with the EU and the IMF, and redistributing the improvements to the working class and the poorer people of Greece.
8. The problem is not with negotiations. Even a revolutionary workers' government may negotiate with the EU and the IMF. So long as that workers' government is limited to one (small) country, it has to do deals to survive. The problem is that Syriza is likely to do a poor deal, and the poor deal is likely to lock Syriza into conservative policies on class issues within Greece; and the Syriza leadership has no real fall-back plan if the deal it gets from the EU and the IMF is worse than it hoped for. We measure a Syriza government by the extent to which it encourages and defends working-class struggle and moves against the Greek bourgeoisie. We advocate and support any pro-working class measures a Syriza-led government makes to e.g. tax the rich, end unemployment, rebuild social health care, legalise migrants.
9. The memories of 2010-2 are still live, Greek society has moved to the left, and the continuing cuts must have built up a huge reservoir of working-class anger. Thus, the possibility of a Syriza victory stimulating, over time, a large revival of working-class action and a renewed rise of the far left, is real.
10. A major problem with the Greek far left outside Syriza is that most of it is fixated on Greek exit from the euro as its first-line difference with Syriza. We agree with the revolutionary left in Syriza: No sacrifice for the euro! Not drachma versus euro but class versus class!
11. Working-class solidarity across Europe, forcing concessions from the EU and ECB, represents a more feasible path than restoration of the drachma and a search for support from Russia, China, etc. We argue for building up that working-class solidarity and for struggles against cuts and pay freezes to be stimulated by Greece's example of defiance and to provide the best solidarity.
